These days any sort of baking, making, and indeed crafting, takes place around children napping, in between wrangling children, or while they are distracted by Disney+ (best lockdown purchase, you the MVP!)

But sometimes the baking takes place with children involved! And this is one of those ones.

My daughter loves sprinkles, and chocolate, and this is based around the simple recipe I use to make a Victoria Sandwich cake (and in fact most basic cakes). Weigh the egg(s), and use the same weight of butter, sugar, and flour. When I was reaching into the cupboard to get the cocoa powder I happened to see some freeze dried raspberry powder and decided to use some of that too….. Delicious! 

Is this a super chocolatey cake? No. It is chocolatey with a little bit of fruitiness, and I have always loved the chocolate and raspberry flavour combination, but is not an intensely chocolatey cake. If I was making something fancy, it might be good to up the cocoa and work some raspberry puree in somewhere, but for little cakes made with a toddler? These guys are great!

Simple Chocolate and Raspberry Cakes

I have given the weights I used in brackets, feel free to use those, but also have given the guidelines for making it for however many eggs you use, and whatever size you use. Just weigh the eggs and go from there! We only had one egg as we had reached the day before shopping day, so just made six little heart shaped cakes – just right for small mouths!

Ingredients

(1) egg(s)

(57g) unsalted butter, softened

(57g) sugar (I used fine granulated, as we don’t find caster sugar in stores in the US very often, but if you have it, use it)

(1/2 tsp) vanilla extract

(37g ~2/3 weight) self raising flour

(10g ~1/6 weight) freeze dried raspberry powder

(10g ~ 1/6 weight) cocoa powder

For decoration

Milk chocolate, melted

Sprinkles

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F, and prepare the pan(s) for baking. Note: for these, and most baking I have been doing lately, I have been using individual small silicone muffin/heart shaped cake tins to make it easy for small people to make/eat them

Cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.

Add in the egg(s) and vanilla extract and mix.

Add in the dry ingredients and combine until just mixed.

Add to the prepared pan(s) and bake until a skewer inserted comes out cleanly. Note: for the cases I used, this was around 15 minutes.

Allow to cool.

Melt the chocolate and spoon over the surface, then add sprinkles!

Yes. A toddler applied the sprinkles. We are still working on the whole “sprinkling” thing!